HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND

FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III

by S.M. Dubnow

A Project Gutenberg EBook

CHAPTER XXI

THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER III. AND THE INAUGURATION OF
POGROMS

1. THE TRIUMPH OF AUTOCRACY

On March 1, 1881, Alexander II. met his death on one of
the principal
thoroughfares of St. Petersburg, smitten by dynamite
bombs hurled at him
by a group of terrorists. The Tzar, who had freed the
Russian peasantry
from personal slavery, paid with his life for refusing to
free the
Russian people from political slavery and police tyranny.
The red
terrorism of the revolutionaries was the counterpart of
the white
terrorism of the Russian authorities, who for many years
had suppressed
the faintest striving for liberty, and had sent to gaol
and prison, or
deported to Siberia, the champions of a constitutional
form of
government and the spokesmen of social reforms. Forced by
the
persecutions of the police to hide beneath the surface,
the
revolutionary societies of underground Russia found
themselves compelled
to resort to methods of terrorism. This terrorism found
its expression
during the last years of Alexander II. in various
attempts on the life
of that ruler, and culminated in the catastrophe of March
1.

Among the members of these revolutionary societies were
also some
representatives from among the young Jewish
_intelligenzia._ They were
in large part college students, who had been carried away
by the ideals
of their Russian comrades. But few of them were counted
among the active
terrorists. The group which prepared the murder of the
Tzar comprised
but one Jewish member, a woman by the name of Hesia
Helfman, who,
moreover, played but a secondary role in the conspiracy,
by keeping a
secret residence for toe revolutionaries. Nevertheless,
in the official
circles, which were anxious to justify their oppression
of the Jews, it
became customary to refer to the "important
role" played by the Jews in
the Russian revolution.

It was with preconceived notions of this kind that
Alexander III.
ascended the throne of Russia, a sovereign with unlimited
power but with
a very limited political horizon. Being a Russian of the
old-fashioned
type and a zealous champion of the Greek-Orthodox Church,
he shared the
anti-Jewish prejudices of his environment. Already as
crown prince he
ordered that a monetary reward be given to the notorious
Lutostanski,
who had presented him with his libellous pamphlet
"Concerning the Use of
Christian Blood by the Jews." [1] During the
Russo-Turkish war of 1877,
when as heir-apparent he was in command of one of the
Balkan armies, he
allowed himself to be persuaded that the abuses in the
Russian
commissariat were due to the "Jewish" purveyors
who supplied the army.
[2] This was all that was known about Judaism in the
circles from which
the ruler of five million Jews derived his information.

[Footnote 1: See p. 203.]

[Footnote 2: The business firm in question was that of
Greger, Horvitz,
and Kohan, of whom the first was a Greek, and the second
a converted
Jew. See above, p. 202, n. 1.]

In March and April, 1881, the destinies of Russia were
being decided at
secret conferences, which were held between the Tzar and
the highest
dignitaries of state in the palace of the quiet little
town of Gatchina,
whither Alexander III. had withdrawn after the death of
his father. Two
parties and two programs were struggling for mastery at
these
conferences. The party of the liberal Minister
Loris-Melikov,
championing a program of moderate reforms, pleaded
primarily for the
establishment of an advisory commission to be composed of
the deputies
deputies of the rural and urban administrations for the
purpose of
considering all legal projects prior to their submission
to
the Council of State. This plan of a paltry popular
representation,
which had obtained the approval of Alexander II. during
the last
days of his life, assumed in the eyes of the reactionary
party the
proportions of a dangerous "constitution," and
was execrated
by it as an encroachment upon the sacred prerogatives of
autocracy.
The head of this party was the procurator-general of the
Holy Synod,
Constantine Petrovich Pobyedonostzev, a former professor
at
the University of Moscow, who had been Alexander III.'s
tutor in the
political sciences when the latter was crown prince. As
the
exponent of an ecclesiastical police state,
Pobyedonostzev contended
that enlightenment and political freedom were harmful to
Russia,
that the people must be held in a state of patriarchal
submission to
the authority of the Church and of the temporal powers,
and that the
Greek-Orthodox masses must be shielded against the
influence of
alien religions and races, which should accordingly
occupy in the
Russian monarchy a position subordinate to that of the
dominant
nation. The ideas of this fanatic reactionary, who was
dubbed "The
Grand Inquisitor" and whose name was popularly
changed into
_Byedonostzev_ [1] carried the day at the Gatchina
conferences. The
deliberations culminated in the decision to refrain from
making any
concessions to the revolutionary element by granting reforms,
however
however modest in character, and to maintain at all cost
the regime of a
police state as a counterbalance to the idea of a legal
state
prevalent in the "rotten West."

[Footnote 1: _Byedonostzev_ means in Russian
"Misfortune-bearer," a play
on the name _Pobyedonostzev_ which signifies
"Victory-bearer."]

Accordingly, the imperial manifesto [1] promulgated on
April 29, 1881,
proclaimed to the people that "the Voice of God hath
commanded us to
take up vigorously the reins of government, inspiring us
with the belief
in the strength and truth of autocratic power, which we
are called upon
to establish and safeguard." The manifesto
"calls upon all faithful
subjects to eradicate the hideous sedition and to
establish faith and
morality." The methods whereby faith and morality
were to be established
were soon made known, in the "Police
Constitution" which was bestowed
upon Russia in August, 1881, under the name of "The
Statute concerning
Enforced Public Safety."

[Footnote 1: A manifesto is a pronouncement issued by the
Tzar on solemn
occasions, such as accession to the throne, events in the
imperial
family, declaration of war, conclusion of peace, etc.,
accompanied, as a
rule, by acts of grace, such as conferring privileges,
granting pardons,
and so on. Compare also above, p. 115.]

This statute confers upon the Russian satraps of the
capitals (St.
Petersburg and Moscow) and of many provincial
centers--the
governors-general and the governors--the power of issuing
special
enactments and thereby setting aside the normal laws as
well as of
placing under arrest and deporting to Siberia, without
the due process
of law, all citizens suspected of "political
unsafety." This travesty of
a _habeas corpus_ Act, insuring the inviolability of
police and
gendarmerie, and practically involving the suspension of
the current
legislation in a large part of the monarchy, has ever
since been
annually renewed by special imperial enactments, and has
remained in
force until our own days. The genuine "Police
Constitution" of 1881 has
survived the civil sham Constitution of 1905, figuring as
a symbol of
legalized lawlessness.